Cold, Hard Football Facts

Barring an unforeseen disaster of Kramer-like proportions, LaDainian Tomlinson will be voted NFL MVP at the end of the season.

When you’re the best player in the league for the best team in the league – the Chargers top our Dominant Dozen this week for the first time in 2006 – an MVP nod is more or less a done deal.

It doesn't hurt to shatter a few records along the way: LT has scored 26 touchdowns already, with four games to play. The single-season TD record of 28 was set just last year by Shaun Alexander. Tomlinson has scored 23 of those touchdowns on the ground, which gives him a good shot to set the rushing TD record, too. Alexander shares the record of 27 rushing touchdowns with Priest Holmes, who set the mark with Kansas City in 2003. If LT can get in the end zone just four times in San Diego's final four games, he'll also set the single-season scoring record. The current mark is held by Hall of Famer Paul Hornung, who scored 176 points for Green Bay in the 12-game 1960 season (15 TDs, 41 PATs, 15 FGs).

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LT will have more hits than Elvis or the Beatles (but not quite as many as Slim Whitman)

In the 40 years of the Super Bowl era, only 10 running backs have been named league MVP by the Associated Press:
1972 – Larry Brown, Redskins
1973 – O.J. Simpson, Bills
1977 – Walter Payton, Bears
1979 – Earl Campbell, Oilers
1985 – Marcus Allen, Raiders
1991 – Thurman Thomas, Bills
1993 – Emmitt Smith, Cowboys
1997 – Barry Sanders, Lions (shared with Brett Favre)
1998 – Terrell Davis, Broncos
2000 – Marshall Faulk, Rams
2005 – Shaun Alexander, Seahawks
Of that list, Smith and Davis won the Super Bowl MVP in the same year as their regular-season nods. Brown, Thomas and Alexander lifted their teams to the Super Bowl and lost. Only Simpson won an MVP as a running back for a non-playoff team – and it took a record 2,003 yards in a 14-game season for him to pull off that feat. Four other players, all quarterbacks (Bart Starr, Terry Bradshaw, Joe Montana and Steve Young), won regular-season and Super Bowl MVP honors in the same season.

Will Tomlinson be the third running back (and seventh player) to double-dip? Ah, if we only had a time machine (and X-ray Specs that worked) …

Last week: It wasn’t easy, but the Chargers held off the perpetually wagon-circling Bills in Buffalo.

Cold, Hard Football Facts: The Chargers are fifth in the NFL with 382 rushing attempts, but have only been stuffed for a loss 22 times – 5.8 percent, lowest rate in the league (the Eagles are second with 5.9 percent).